


Bad Wolf

by creatureofhobbit



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 03:39:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2373152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyler worries about the possibility of triggering his curse again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Wolf

The first time Tyler realised that he had rages unlike anyone else was after a fight he’d had early in his childhood. Some kid in the grade above had started on Matt for no obvious reason, taunting him about having no father.

Even at the age he was then, Tyler had heard the rumours about Matt’s father too, including one that Kelly Donovan had no idea who Matt’s dad was herself but that it was someone different from whoever Vicki’s dad was. But it was nothing to do with this jackass. Matt was his best friend, and he wasn’t going to let this kid pick on him.

When the kid started calling Matt the word beginning with B that Tyler didn’t understand, but had once heard his father use to describe the guy who was running against him for mayor that year and then got into trouble for repeating it himself, Tyler decided enough was enough and launched himself at the kid, punching him repeatedly until he shut up.

By the time he’d finished, the kid had a bloody nose. Tyler walked back towards Matt, saying “He’s never gonna bother you again.”

But Matt was staring at Tyler with a look of horror. “Tyler,” he asked, “what have you done?”

 

People avoided Tyler for a while after that. Matt was still his best friend, but there were a lot of kids who only tolerated him for Matt’s sake. He’d been invited to Elena Gilbert’s birthday party not long after that fight, and Elena’s brother had taken one look at him and immediately hidden behind his mother’s legs, setting the tone for a mutual dislike that went on for about ten years after that. He was still avoided by a lot of people throughout elementary school, but then when he started at Mystic Falls Middle School he was picked for the football team, and was able to channel some of his aggression into the game. When Tyler started winning them matches, other kids who’d never given him the time of day before were suddenly hanging on to his every word.

In sophomore year, the team had lost a match badly. While Tanner had chewed out the team as a whole, Mayor Lockwood seemed to have decided that they’d lost because of how Tyler had played. After the fight that had kicked off between them in front of the whole school, Carol Lockwood had decided that Tyler needed some kind of anger management. He’d started sessions with Elena’s dad, Grayson Gilbert, after that, and for a while things had started to look up. After another such blowup, Tyler had sat on Grayson’s couch, talking about how he thought the behaviour he’d witnessed from his father might be a trigger for his own anger. Grayson had asked Tyler “Before this argument you had with your father yesterday, when was the last time you felt this uncontrollable anger?”

“About a month ago,” Tyler had replied. “The time before that was the argument at the game,” which had been another month earlier.

Grayson had looked disturbed by that, and had told Tyler he thought it was time they ended their session, even though Tyler still had another fifteen minutes to go. Tyler thought it was weird, but just decided he’d ask Grayson what that was all about at the next session.

He never did get the chance to ask Grayson, because that was the last session he’d had before Grayson and Miranda Gilbert were killed in the accident. Tyler never started sessions with anyone else, so for a while the issue was never explored again. It wasn’t until he found out the truth about his uncle Mason that he finally felt he understood why he had these rages. But understanding why didn’t make it any easier for him to control them. If anything, becoming a werewolf meant that he had even less control. He’d bitten Damon, and knew there was every chance he could bite Caroline, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

His friends had all been horrified when he had become sired to Klaus. Caroline had described him once as having gone back to “the old Tyler”. But Tyler felt that she was wrong. He was a new Tyler now, one who had the choice to avoid his transformations. He had free will now, in spite of what Caroline thought, and Klaus was the one who had given it to him. It wasn’t until he did what he’d feared for so long and actually bit Caroline that he realised that she’d been right all along. He had to break the bond, to do what he could to gain some control in his life. And he knew that in doing so he would be a better person, just as Caroline had become once she had become a vampire.

And he knew he was going to have to draw on those experiences again once he realised that he was back, and he was human, an untriggered werewolf once more. Without the control he’d had once he’d broken the sire bond, Tyler knew he was just going to feel the same rages once more, that he risked triggering his curse again and this time there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop himself from turning. He knew he was going to go back to the original version of himself, the version even he disliked now that he knew what it was to be the other Tyler. Matt and Jeremy, and his other friends, they knew his history, and they already promised that as far as possible, they’d help try and keep him in check. But they couldn’t be around him all the time, and Tyler knew there was going to be a time he would lose his temper, lose control. And in some ways, the fact that he understood it now and knew just what was at stake made it so much worse. But Tyler knew he would try whatever it took to keep from triggering his curse again.


End file.
